Our Vision at Pacific Beach Presbyterian Church is: People Bringing People to Christ. We'll be posting the text versions of the sermon from our morning worship service here weekly! For more information on our church or service times, visit our website at www.pbpres.org.

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Where are They? (Luke 17:11-19) by Rev. Dr. Alan W. Deuel

Comedian Louis C.K.
whose known for his biting, acerbic and sacrcastic humor, became famous
for the following routine. By November
2011 the clip was burning up the internet and had over 4 million views. Here's what he said to poke fun at our
ingratitude and impatience:

"Everything's
amazing right now, but nobody's happy."
In my lifetime the changes in the world have been incredible. When I was
a kid, we had a rotary phone. We had a phone you had to stand next to, and you
had to dial it. Do you realize how
primitive that was? And you would
actually hate people who had zeroes in their number because it was more
work. And then if you called and they
weren't home, the phone would just ring lonely by itself.

And then if you wanted
money you had to go into a real bank—and it was open for like three hours, and
you'd stand in line and write a check.
And then if you ran out of money, you'd just say, "Well, I just
can't do any more things now." Now
we live in an amazing, amazing world, and it's wasted on a generation of
spoiled people that don't care. This is what people are like now: they've got
their phone, and they go, "Ugh, it won't work fast enough." Give it a second! It's going to space. Will you give it a
second to get back from space? Is the
speed of light too slow for you?

I was on an airplane,
and there was high-speed internet …. And I'm sitting on the plane, and they
say, "Open up your laptop, you can go on the internet." And then the thing breaks down. They
apologize, "The internet's not working we apologize." And the guy
next to me says, "O, great this stinks." Like how quickly the world
owes him something he knew existed only ten seconds ago.

People come back from
flights, and they tell you their story, and it's a horror story …. They say,
"It was the worst day of my life.
First of all, we didn't board for twenty minutes. And then we get on the plane, and they made
us sit there on the runway for forty minutes." And I say, "O, really,
and what happened next? Did you fly in
the air, incredibly, like a bird? Did
you partake in the miracle of human flight?" Everybody on every plane should be constantly
screaming,"WOW!" We're flying.
We're sitting in a chair in the sky!
Here's the thing: People say there are "delays" on flights.
Delays, really? New York to California in five hours! It used to take thirty years to do that, and
a bunch of you would die on the way.”

The season of thanksgiving, of giving thanks, is upon
us. Clearly, the origin of Thanksgiving
Day was never meant to be a generic holiday, a day to give thanks in general,
but a day to specifically give thanks and praise to God, to seek God’s
intervention in ending the civil war which had torn the nation apart and to
bring reconciliation and healing between the States.

President Abraham Lincoln, in 1863, established a special
day called Thanksgiving. He wrote: “I invite my fellow citizens in every part of
the united States
to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of
thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father. And I recommend that they fervently implore
the interposition of the Almighty’s hand to heal the wounds of the nation and
to restore it as may be consistent with the Divine purpose to the full
enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and union.” Inspiring words.

The season of Thanksgiving offers us the opportunity to
examine our hearts and attitudes and to honestly reflect on some important
questions: Am I a thankful person? Do I
live a thankful life? Do I have a
thankful heart? What am I truly thankful
for? How do I give thanks?

I assert that being thankful, the trait or quality
thankfulness, is not natural to human beings.
It must be taught and caught. You
see it in children – one of the first lessons parents teach their children is to
say thank you. Our Gospel story about
lepers further illustrates this
assertion. Lepers were feared and loathed in Jesus’ day. They were despised and repulsive to gaze
upon. Their mere presence horrified
people who feared they would become infected with the dreaded disease. They were socially ostracized, cut off from
family, prohibited from entering the temple, and banished to outlying caves or
valleys or villages away from the community.
They were literally the zombies, the walking dead of their day.

In our story Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem and as he approaches a village, ten
lepers confront him. For the average
person meeting one leper one be terrifying enough, let alone being surrounded
by ten lepers. The story says: “Keeping their distance, they cried out in
desperation Jesus Master, have mercy on us.” The law required that lepers keep a distance
from people. For example when the wind
was blowing the law said lepers must stand at least 50 yards away. The law specified that if a leper saw someone
approaching, they had to cross to the other side of the road and yell unclean
three times, to warn people.

These lepers knew in their hearts that Jesus was no ordinary
rabbi. They call him master and believed
that Jesus had the power to heal. And
out of compassion and by the divine power pulsating within him, Jesus heals
them.

Now if Jesus healed me of a dreaded disease, I would be
ecstatic. How about you? I would fall on
my knees and kiss his feet and say thank you God. And yet though ten lepers were healed, only
one leper returned and gave thanks. “A Samaritan, seeing that he was healed,
turned back and with a loud voice glorified God, fell down on his face at
Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks.”

Jesus exclaims: “Were
not ten made clean? Where are the other
nine? Was no one found to return and
give God praise except this foreigner?” You can hear the sadness and disappointment in
Jesus’ words. Why was Jesus
disappointed that only one leper had returned to give thanks? Were his feelings hurt that they didn't
return to thank him and show their appreciation? No.
Jesus was deeply concerned about their spiritual life, the condition of
their soul and heart. An ungrateful
heart, a cold heart, a callous heart is a form of spiritual death. Jesus healed the lepers so that they would
give glory to God. “Was none of them found to return and give praise to God?” He had wanted them to come to a living faith
in God, to walk with God, to worship God for their miraculous gift of
healing. But alas, only one praised God
in a loud voice.

Author Jim Stovall in his book, The Ultimate Gift
writes: “I have always found it ironic that the people in this world who have
the most to be thankful for are often the least thankful, and somehow the
people who have virtually nothing, many times live lives full of gratitude.” Do you agree? Is that your observation? Have you found that to be true?

Look inside yourself for a moment. Is your heart thankful, if yes, ask yourself
why? Why are you a thankful person? Since thankfulness is not intrinsic to human
nature, what has formed your heart? I
suspect a growing and maturing faith has something to do with it.

Or is your heart thankless?
If you have an ungrateful heart, repent, tell God you are sorry, seek
God’s forgiveness and ask God to change it.
And God will. A contemporary
praise chorus says: “Change my heart oh God Make it ever true, Change
my heart oh God, May I be likeYou. You are the potter I am the clay, Mold me
and make me, This is what I pray. Change
my heart oh God, Make it ever true, Change my heart oh God, May I be like You.” Yes, a growing, dynamic and genuine faith in
God has a way of stimulating and producing a grateful heart.

The quality of gratitude is key to a healthy life. First, a thankful heart reduces stress in
your life by making you more content with who you are and what you have. You are able to see something to give thanks
for in every situation. You will
discover that God can bring something good out of your situation, and that God
can save you from descending into the pit of resentment and bitterness. Second, a grateful heart can increase joy in
your life. Focusing on blessings,
focusing on the positive, rather than the negative, helps to produce joy. Third, a grateful heart builds positive
relationships. Thank-less, ungrateful
people repel; thankful, appreciative people attract. Exuding a spirit of gratitude draws people
closer to you. And fourth, giving thanks for the gift of life brings you
ever closer to the Giver of life.
Praying steadily to God for a thankful heart, for a thankful spirit, is
a good prayer. It is a prayer God will
answer because it is His will for His people, for you and for me.

The closer our walk with God the greater our ability to
sincerely give thanks from the heart.
Someone wrote: "What a gift
it is to be born with an outlook toward the bright side of things! And if not so by nature, what a triumph of
grace to be made thankful through a renewed heart. It is so much more
comfortable and rational to see what we have to be thankful for and to rejoice
accordingly, than to have our vision for ever filled with our lacks and our
needs. Happy are they who possess this gift! Blessings may fail and fortunes
vary, but the thankful heart remains. The Happy Past at least is secure...and
heaven is ahead.”

Jesus asked, "Were
not all ten healed? Where are they?”
Let us give thanks to the lord with our whole heart, for God's steadfast
love and mercy endures forever. Happy
Thanksgiving, Amen!

About our Church

We here at Pacific Beach Presbyterian Church are a family of Christians dedicated to sharing the word of God with our neighbors. Our vision is: People Bringing People to Christ. We have a single Sunday morning worship service at 10:00am, and our 7:00pm Roots Young Adult Service.